Today, social media platforms are user-centered services in which users require to register with personal information, such as age, name, gender, cell phone number. The fact that social media sites generate revenue from targeted advertising which is based on massive collection on personal information and profiling. As such, social media have been collecting users' data, either registered or not, without their consent. For example, the French data protection authority on, Feb. 8, 2016, gave Facebook three months to stop tracking non-users' web activity without their consent and ordered the social network to stop some transfers of personal data to the United States.
Recent research reveals that identity theft affects millions of people a year, costing victims countless hours and money in identity recovery and repair. One of the reasons causes this pattern of online theft and fraud is a lack of consumer knowledge regarding protecting own identity online. More alarming is that consumers are growing comfort, and trust in, with the mainstream social media platform providers, such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc., In addition, a lack of ethics or policing of the personal data gathering by the social media makes the privacy protection even more difficult. This issue will become consciousness sooner rather than later.
The main issue with the mainstream social media is that users are exposed to identity theft and fraud with limited government oversight, industry standards or incentives to educate users on security, privacy and identity protection. Additionally, social media platforms have already collected massive confidential user information, and are likely vulnerable to outside (or inside) attack. On the marketing front, social media have been tracking registered users' locations from their cell phones through the global positioning system (GPS) or via communication network references such as a cell tower location ID or Internet IP address.
One concern associated with personal information gathering is that all the social media sites employ centralized database system for storing users' accounts containing personal information. The centralized database system is vulnerable to cyber attack.
Another concern is that once the personal contact information is on public domain it opens up for many unwanted contacts from unfamiliar third party.
With the increased global use of social media, there are more opportunities than ever before to steal identities or perpetrate fraud online.
Thus, it would be advantageous for the new method to provide the same social media convention, such as sharing photos, music, text, videos, blogs, and applications, yet requires no collection on personal private information.
It would be further advantageous for the new method to provide an effective information delivery within a community where the information matters them most.
It would also be advantageous for the new method to deliver self-governing information to locations with which the information content is associated.